Hackaday links: December 26, 2010

It’s hard to let a Christmas go by without looking in on a geeky Christmas tree project. Luckily, [Peter Davenport] decided to share his Arduino and LCD shield tree.

Blinking USB dude

If you’ve got a 555 timer and some commonly salvageable components give this blinking LED man a try. The version above is USB powered but that’s just to take advantage of the 5V regulated power.

Propeller business card

[Jay’s] business card is packing quite a punch with this Propeller microcontroller. We love seeing electronics design in cards (however unrealistic the price and portability may be), and this is a big processing upgrade compared to the Tiny85 based offering.

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11 thoughts on “Hackaday links: December 26, 2010”

Saw that RC vid I think via ./ and while it’s ultra cool possibly not much of a hack, more of a professional production with lots of experience, testing, planning, and involvement by the authorities so the DHS wouldn’t come down on him for it.

Saw Jay’s business card over at the Prop forums. Thought he was being a bit paranoid over the cell battery, the prop is clearly rated to run down to 2.8V and if you run it on RCSLOW (native slow oscillator, ~20 kHz) it runs at even lower voltages and draws microamps.

The 555 LED blinker reminded me of the LM3909 LED flasher chip available up to the 1980s. Almost as versatile as the 555, it would run off 1.5V and flash an LED for ages requiring only a timing capacitor to run. National Semiconductor’s databook had a fascinating set of example circuits for it including an AM radio. Alas, it was consigned to the dustbin of history long ago.

the authoritys where not involved in any planning and were not notified, this was done by a member in a forum that im quite involved in, and the guy who didn’t doesn’t live in the us so nothing will happen to him. lol win!

whats the record for fastest led blink? even if u ran an led on an offset ac wave (like +1.5,-.5) to suck away unused power… how fast could you blink an led and still be able to measure with optical equipment that its still blinking?